Blood
by The Silver Trumpet
Summary: When it is discovered that Aurora's unborn child has a defective heart, Diaval offers his own in exchange. Day seven of Tumblr's Maleval week. Prompt: Blood or AU. One-shot.


Diaval approached Maleficent from behind. "Mistress?" he queried, following her disheartened gaze. Those emerald eyes trailed after their elated beastie, their young queen who was joyfully returning to her castle home after reporting that she was with child. The sunset tickled the queen's hair a golden-orange and played about her shadow. "Mistress, are you alright?" The fairy hadn't been herself since Aurora made her appearance. She had worn a painted smile the entire time. Though she had fooled their goddaughter, Diaval had spent most of his life with her, and he knew that she was greatly unsettled about some mysterious thing.

Her hands tightened on themselves. There were tears swimming in her eyes, and the raven man stepped closer, wondering how he could comfort her. In her most vulnerable voice, she told him, "Aurora's child has a defective heart." He frowned and waited for elaboration. People with weak hearts could live, couldn't they? Especially a pampered life like that of a prince. "He won't be strong enough. He won't—He won't…" She shook her head, unable to muster the words.

He reached for her hand, but he didn't touch her. He acted on his impulses far too often, and he felt he sometimes pushed her away. "But…you can heal him, can't you?" Diaval had never seen a wound his mistress couldn't heal. Even when he'd been ripped and burned and slashed by iron in the castle, she had healed him. Surely a little heart defect would be no problem at all!

She bent her head. "Even fairies cannot manipulate the heart, not well. It is too precious an organ for magic to alter." She watched his hand reach for hers, watched it retract upon a second thought, and she was touched by the small action of affection toward her. She let her hand catch in his. His hand made hers feel dainty and small; his palm was rough and warm against hers.

His entire face fell, filled with hurt for the girl they had raised together, with grief for the grandson they both wanted more than anything. He traced his thumb over the back of her hand, hoping the movement would offer comfort to her. It didn't for him. After a few minutes, she turned away, and her hand fell from his. She spread her wings and took to the air. He stared after her, knowing the winds could soothe her far better than he ever would.

He spent the following months frequently bouncing back from the castle to the moors and back again. Maleficent wanted eyes on Aurora at all times, but the fairy still feared the place that once housed her archenemy, and Diaval was sent to watch her instead. He watched as her belly rounded, and she could no longer make the journey to the moors. On some rare nights, Maleficent would fly to the window with him and watch, but she never made her presence known.

The saddest part of it all was Aurora's _glee_. Neither of them had the heart to tell their child that her son would be unable to live. So, in what little free time he had, Diaval searched through charm books. He couldn't accept that Maleficent couldn't save the boy. She could do everything. She could create a dragon with a wave of her hand; she could strike something dead with a burst of chilly blue light. Certainly, if she could take life, she could give it. But there was only one spell he managed to find. She would refuse, he was sure. But he still requested.

He went to her with the book in his arms. "Diaval, I sent you away an hour ago," she snapped. She had been more irritable than usual.

He sat beside her and said nothing, pointing to the spell with one long finger. After a few moments of watching her eyes scan across the page, he whispered. "Do it to me." The spell was called the Transfer of Hearts, and it quite literally lived up to its name. It would allow the caster to trade the hearts of two separate parties. He could feel her tensing beside him, felt her rippling energy, and he knew how deeply she was thinking it through. _He_ hadn't thought it through, not really. He didn't feel he needed to. After all, he had been created to serve his mistress, and he had come to love her and their goddaughter, and he would be damned if he had a chance to save his grandson and he didn't take it. Even at the cost of his own life.

She pushed the book away. "No."

"_Please!_"

"No." She was breathing heavily. She wouldn't look at him. Her whole posture was more rigid than it had been in years, and her feathers were ruffled, prickled, almost panicked. "Go now." That was what she did when she couldn't handle her emotions; she sent him away, so he wouldn't see her break down. He had been respectful of that for a very long time. But now? Now, as she was refusing him his only desire and the only way they had to spare Aurora's son? He could only spare her feelings so much.

He grasped her wrist. "_No_." He glared at the side of her face. "This might be the only chance we have to save him—to save Aurora! You know what this will do to her! We can—we can save her, her and Philip. This will save their marriage. This might save the entire kingdom, Maleficent!" He seldom used her given name. It was enough to make her look at him. "If we don't do this, it'll…it'll kill her. You know that. You know it'll tear her down and ruin her. Let me help her, please."

He knew what he was doing. It was always about _Aurora_. Maleficent would do absolutely anything for Aurora; she would run to the ends of the earth, cut off her own wings if the queen requested as much. He knew that, and he was abusing it to get what he wanted. She snatched her wrist away from him. "I said _no_, Diaval." He glowered back at her. "I will not do it."

He was angry, so_ angry_, his hands fisted in the grass. He needed more explanation than what she was providing. There was no reason for her to refuse. He leapt back to his feet. The rage was bringing hot tears to his eyes. "Why the hell not?" He dug his nails into his palms. "I serve no purpose in this world! I am a useless being! You could—you could _save_ him! Dammit, Maleficent! You could be the hero for once, and then Aurora will have her son and you'll have your happiness! Are you _determined_ to make yourself miserable for the rest of your life?"

He'd struck a nerve. She rose slowly and gave him even more fearsome a look than the one he had tossed at her. Several silent moments, heated with tension, zipped past them before she finally managed in the smallest voice he'd ever heard, "I can't believe you think that I could ever be _happy_ without you." It knocked the breath from his lungs, and he took a small step backward to keep himself from toppling over. "I don't know who or what you think you are, but you have been my only friend for a time when I chased all others away, and I would not be able to live with myself if I performed this spell on you." She ripped the page from the book and tore it shreds. "Now go!" The gleam in her eye told him she was not to be crossed over it, and he obeyed with a final hurt look tossed back at her.

Several weeks later, he flew to the queen's window and settled on the sill, peering inside. The curtains were closed, but shrieks spilled from within. His feathers ruffled in fear. He cawed loudly and flapped at the window, pecking. Someone would let him in. Almost immediately, a maid opened the window. She yelled, "Shoo, go away!" but he flew right past her and landed on Aurora's pillow. Sweat beaded on her face, but she still gave a weak smile and petted his feathers.

"Pretty bird."

The maid went to bat him away. "Don't touch that filthy crow, your majesty! You'll get diseases!"

Aurora pulled him to safety with a hurt look. "He is not a _crow_; he is a beautiful raven, and—" She cut off in a strangled cry of pain. Diaval clacked his beak uncertainly and moved behind her hair, where he began to preen the soft golden curls. Her hands wrapped themselves in the sheets. And that was when he smelled it—blood. He jerked up from his preening job with a lock still in his beak. Blood poured across the blankets from Aurora's body. She arched her back and gave a shriek of agony. He fluttered to the bedpost to stay out of the maids' ways and gave a caw.

But the blood wouldn't _stop_. It kept coming and coming, and the women screamed for a healer, and Aurora's breathing was starting to lighten. He landed beside her again and touched her cheek with his head. She brushed one finger over his wing. "Pretty bird," she whispered weakly. He squawked at her in protest of her hand leaving his feather. "Tell godmother I love her." He flapped his wings and cawed at her, almost angrily. He cursed himself and circled just above her head. The maids had to see, they had to help! Their queen was lying in the bed dying and they were too busy tripping over each other to help her!

The blood flow grew thicker. He landed by her head a final time and fondly tugged one blonde curl, hoping to elicit any kind of response—a smile, a touch—but she was gone. She cried out at another contraction. More blood, more blood, and a final breath shuddered from her lungs. Her heart ceased to beat, and with it, her son's. Diaval's wings carried him out the open window before the chaos ensued within the stone walls.

When he returned to Maleficent, he collapsed on the ground in a bundle of sobs and couldn't speak. He couldn't tell her. He couldn't be the one to bear the news. Because on top of all his tragedy was guilt, guilt, so much guilt that he'd been unable to save her, unable to save her child, unable to do anything but helplessly watch and squawk. He finally managed to gasp out, "She's gone," before the next sob choked him, and he curled tighter into himself. Her wings beat into the wind, and he felt so utterly _alone_.

She came back when he feared she wouldn't. Neither of them spoke for the longest time. His sobs had ebbed into a trickle down both cheeks. "There was so much _blood_," he whimpered. His chin bent down to his chest, and his arms held his insides together when he feared they would combust upon themselves.

She didn't respond to him verbally, but a hand touched his back. The other reached around him, and before he knew it, she was hugging him. His arms automatically reciprocated, and she began to quake with sobs. Her pain only multiplied his, and he bawled against her neck. He had never felt such an acute pain before in his life, because this time he knew, he _knew_, he could have _saved_ her. Soft feathers wrapped around them, cocooning them. "I couldn't—I couldn't—" She cut off his cries by pressing her lips against his.

Their lips didn't move in synchronization, didn't catch a romantic rhythm, did absolutely nothing but silence the verbal cries that threatened to burst from both of them. Tears rushed down their faces, and neither wiped away the other's. Too much fear, too much pain, too much regret. Too much blood.


End file.
